KINGS­MAN: THE SE­CRET SER­VICE

Colin Firth star

I think to a very large ex­tent, in terms of style, the character of the spy movies that I fell in love with has its roots in the ’ 60s. It’s The Man From UN­CLE, it’s the Harry

Palmer films, it’s John Steed’s Avengers, those early Bond films. It’s the guy in the suit who seems slick and cool and ca­pa­ble, and is very, very con­tained, but you cross him at your peril. He’ll get you with the um­brella or a slick move or a gad­get or some­thing. It was all that. I’d been wait­ing for the of­fer on Bond for long enough, but it was Matthew Vaughn who de­cided that it was a good com­bi­na­tion. He likes to take your pre­sump­tions about peo­ple and then flip them on their head, so he came to me and said, “I think you’re the last per­son on Earth any­body would ex­pect to kick any­one’s ass, so I think it would be a big sur­prise. But I would like you to do it, so are you up for it?”

You’ve played lots of iconic roles like Mr Darcy and King George VI, but what was it like to be the ac­tion star?

It was great fun. In terms of what’s dif­fer­ent I’ve never had to do any­thing this phys­i­cal un­less you in­clude pulling Hugh Grant’s hair! That was prob­a­bly what first hinted at me as a killing ma­chine! The train­ing was ex­traor­di­nar­ily in­tense and un­fa­mil­iar to me. It was long and in­cred­i­bly grat­i­fy­ing, and by the end, I wished I’d done more of it. It was a good six months of three hours a day with ex­tra­or­di­nary peo­ple – we were work­ing with the best in the world, ba­si­cally, gym­nasts, Thai box­ers, mar­tial artists of all kinds, spe­cial forces…